这是我在微信上看到的别人翻译的一篇经济学人的文章，译者是火柴商业评论。
China’s bond market

中国的债券市场

Pricing risk

定价风险

Debt issuance booms despite a wave of defaults

尽管存在违约风险，债券发行依然如火如荼

Nov 28th 2015 | SHANGHAI | From the print edition

CHINA’S domestic bond market has never been riskier. It was only last year that it suffered its first default. This year at least six companies have defaulted. The miscreants are a diverse lot, including a beverage bottler, a solar-panel maker and a cement company. As economic growth grinds lower, defaults will inevitably rise.

中国国内债券市场正在经历史上最大的一次风险。就在去年，中国债券市场才刚刚经历了首次债务违约事件。今年，至少有六家公司的债务出现违约。这些违约公司跨越各行各业，其中有饮料瓶制造商，太阳能板生产商以及一家水泥公司。随着经济增速的放缓，违约事件的增多在所难免。

A gloomy outlook of this kind would normally lead investors to demand a premium before buying bonds. Instead, they have lapped them up, making it cheaper for China’s companies to borrow. Bond issuance has boomed this year, reaching almost 12 trillion yuan ($1.9 trillion) so far, up from the record 7.7 trillion sold in all of 2014, according to Wind Information, a data provider. This has prompted warnings that, much like the stockmarket earlier this year, China’s bond market is swelling into a bubble.

市场对违约行为看衰，投资者们理所当然会要求在购买债券之前就获取收益。然而，他们对各类债券照单全收，使得中国公司的贷款成本变低了。根据Wind Information提供的数据，中国市场债券的发行量在今年持续上升，迄今为止达到12万亿人民币（约合1.9万亿美元），打破了2014年7.7万亿发行总额的历史记录。这就不禁让人想到了先前的警告，中国的债券市场很有可能会像它的股市一样急剧膨胀，直至出现泡沫。

Banks accounted for almost all lending in China until a decade ago. Today, for every five yuan of loans companies take out, they also finance themselves with one yuan of bonds. That has made China the world’s third-biggest bond market, behind America and Japan—a development that should help shield the economy from the expensive busts to which banks are prone.

在过去，所有的借贷业务都由银行承担，这一局面直到十年前才被打破。如今，只要一家公司申请五元人民币的贷款，就要发行一元债券来进行运作。这就使得中国成为仅次于美国和日本的世界第三大债券市场—这样会保护企业不会破产，而银行似乎会更加容易破产。

At the moment, though, the bond market seems to be stoking risk. For most of the past five years, yields on highly rated corporate bonds were two or three percentage points higher than on government bonds of the same maturity. This year the spread has narrowed, hitting a low in early November of just 1.3 percentage points (see chart). This implies that investors think corporate bonds have become less risky, despite the proliferation of defaults.

与此同时，虽然债券市场看上去正在制造泡沫。在过去五年的大多数时候，评级较高的几家公司的债券收益率总是比同期国债收益率高出两到三个百分点。然而今年，两者之间的差距缩小了，今年11月初创下了新低，仅为1.3个百分点（见图表）。这就意味着投资者认为公司债券的风险降低了，哪怕存在增发和违约风险也值得一投。

Look at individual bonds, and signs of excess are even more obvious. Vanke is China’s biggest listed property developer and, by most accounts, a well-managed company. But the Chinese property business is going through a painful retrenchment after years of overbuilding, which suggests Vanke’s bonds are not without their risks. Yet in late September they were treated as just as safe as official issuers. Vanke sold five-year bonds at a yield of 3.5%, the same as the bonds of some provincial governments at the time.

仅就单只债券而言，超发的迹象也是显而易见。万科是中国最大的上市房地产公司，并且这家公司管理良好。但是在经历了前几年的生产过剩之后，中国的房地产公司正处于缩衣节食的阵痛期，这就意味着万科的债券是存在风险的。但是在九月末，它却被认定为跟官方发行的债券一样安全。万科五年期的债券收益率为3.5%，此收益率等同于当时一些省级地方ZF发行的债券。

Despite these ominous portents, many Chinese bond analysts take a sanguine view. The increase in issuance has been exaggerated by a debt swap: local governments are on track this year to replace about 3 trillion yuan of expensive loans with cheaper bonds. The average interest rate paid on outstanding debt in China has fallen from nearly 7% last year to just over 6% this year, according to Hua Chuang Securities, making it easier for borrowers to keep up with payments.

尽管前兆不详，但许多中国证券分析师对此持乐观态度。债务互换进一步加速了债券的增发：各地ZF在今年正试图通过发行收益较低的债券来偿还3万亿的贷款额度。根据华创证券的统计，中国未偿还债务的平均年化收益率从去年的将近7%跌至今年的仅仅6%出头，借贷方到期偿还的能力得到了增强。

Besides, with growth sluggish, the central bank will probably keep interest rates low. Shi Lei, head of fixed-income research at Ping An Securities, expects yields to come down by as much as half a percentage point over the next year. Spreads between interest rates on corporate bonds and government ones are also starting to widen again. Their compression had been spurred by the stockmarket crash in July, when much of the money that fled stocks ended up in bonds of all ratings. Chen Kang of SWS Research believes that now the stockmarket has rebounded, investors are starting to differentiate again between private and government-backed issuers.

另外，随着经济下滑，中国央行很可能会把低利率保持在较低水平。平安证券公司固定收益证券研究的负责人石磊（Shi Lei，音译）预期，明年债券收益率降幅将达50%之多。公司债券与ZF债券之间的收益率差距也将日益扩大。由于七月股市的冲击导致大量的资金逃离股市，转投于各个评级的债券，这就激发了之前压抑已久的债券市场。 上海申银万国证券研究所有限公司的陈康（Chen Kang，音译）认为，如今的股市已经历触底反弹，投资者们开始再次在公司债券和企业债券之间进行权衡。

Whether those government-backed issuers deserve their low yields is another question. The handful of defaults to date shows that China is willing to let some companies fail, but so far no big firms in which the central government retains a sizeable shareholding have met that fate. Instead, those that have got into trouble have been rescued, leading investors to treat their bonds as virtually risk-free. SinoSteel, a struggling miner and steel trader, is the latest test of this implicit guarantee. It had been due to repay bondholders some 2 billion yuan in October, but pushed the date back to December 16th. A default would shake investors’ faith in government-backed bonds—bringing some sobriety to a market that sorely needs it.

这些企业债券是否对得起它的低利率还是个问题。一些少量的期限违约说明中国ZF还是愿意看到一些公司在债券市场上失利的，但是迄今为止，一些ZF大量持股的大企业还没有过这种遭遇。相反，那些曾经陷入困顿的国企都被救活了，使得投资者们认为这些企业的债券是零风险的。中国中钢集团是一家危在旦夕的矿业钢铁公司，也是受益于这项“潜规则”的最新典型。这家公司十月份本应到期偿还投资者大约20亿人民币，但它将偿还期限拖至十二月十六号。到期违约会动摇投资者对国有企业债券的信心——同时为债券市场带去一丝本应有的清醒。

From the print edition: Finance and economics